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Jamie315

: How to find open source alternatives to commercial fonts? What is the best way to find an open source alternative to a commercial font? I was thinking as some service as alternativeto.net or

@Jamie315

Posted in: #Fonts #OpenSource #ResourceRecommendations #SoftwareRecommendation #Typography

What is the best way to find an open source alternative to a commercial font? I was thinking as some service as alternativeto.net or a whatthefont.com that would spit out fonts that are similar to the one uploaded.

For example: What is the open source font that looks most similar to Scala Sans? (see picture) What would be the criteria and tools to identify similarity?

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@Cofer715

I use dafont . IT's nice, organised and has commercial and free fonts.

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@Shanna688

I use alternatype.net it shows the most similar fonts to a commercial one from Google Fonts and Font Squirrel. The database is not too big but I think the project is growing everyday.

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@Angie364

Here is a good resource for open source fonts.
typophile.com/node/97575

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@Jamie315

Whatfontis.com is an alternative to whatthefont.com, but you have the option to just display free fonts.

However, when uploading my example, I could not find anything suitable.

A manually found alternative, in my opinion, would be Source Sans Pro, Semibold. As the width differs, I tweaked kerning manually:

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@Megan533

The best way to find fonts right now is to ask people who know. I'm not aware of a service; any font-identification service is typically created to drive sales, so there's not really an incentive to make version that drives you to FOSS typography.

So, you're in the right place :) Font identification happens often here, and there are a lot of people who can make font recommendations.

I'm not the best at this sort of thing, but when I saw the 'u', the 'n', and the proportions of Scala, I immediately thought of Junction, by the League of Moveable Type:



It's certainly different and there is no bold variant yet, but it might serve your purposes well enough.

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